A volunteer board of directors for a community-based nonprofit organization had uneven technology — some of it outdated, with some of the institutional knowledge held by one volunteer board member — and as such, had issues both accessing documents internally and communicating externally about their projects, goals, and needs with their current audience and potential volunteers and contributors.
Objective
At Congruity Works, our approach starts with sitting down and listening to key stakeholders. In this scenario, we developed a straightforward objective for our audit: “Evaluate the current state of communications systems and help the team use these tools and platforms more effectively.”
This process starts with an in-depth meeting where we can hear what the organization already has in place and how well these tools are working for them, including how well-trained (or not) each individual is on the existing systems. We have tremendous experience in building solutions, and if we discover that something is missing or broken, we can discuss and suggest new solutions. But this process always starts with active listening so that we can get a full understanding of where the organization is — and so that our audit can best deliver actionable, helpful next steps.
Questions and ideas that we like to explore in early conversations can include:
- What does success look like for your organization or programs?
- What works well for you?
- What needs improvement?
- How are your existing services and platforms not serving your organization’s needs?
- What are your aspirations? What do you want the ability to do that you can’t do now?
Deliverables
When we complete a systems audit, the organization receives:
- A full review of all existing systems, including pain points and configurations, so that we can deliver recommendations and suggest improvements. This can include websites, email marketing, file management systems, social media, and CRMs.
- An outline for configuration and deployment of our recommendations, with the option for that to be completed and managed by the Congruity Works team, or for our team to provide training to the organization’s staff.
- Based on the priorities you identify, we can then work with you to make improvements to your technology stack — which may include implementing and onboarding for new pieces of technology — that improve your experience and ability to communicate clearly with your supporters and stakeholders.
- Our audits include live training sessions that we record and share with your team so that you can learn by doing — and train others on your team about how to work smarter using your upgraded systems.
- We also give you thorough documentation and point to external training resources for your respective systems to increase staff understanding and efficiency.
Our Value
We help our busy customers get a handle on their complete technology systems and then see how well they match to their stated needs. When needed, we help build a solution. But more often than not, we're going to help our clients better align their digital platforms to the needs of their business, whether that's for a nonprofit, a media company or a membership-focused organization.
We can help you with:
- Building or augmenting technology solutions that solve complex problems
- Building sustainable, flexible solutions that can adapt and scale over time
- Holding institutional memory so that we can collectively make decisions in the best interest of the organization